Design Doc
(Working Title) is a 3D, multiplayer Gauntlet-style roguelike in which players use their mighty weapons to smash their way through hordes of squishy, chunky enemies. Players take control of (professions tbd) who storm a (location tbd) in an attempt to gather items and power-ups to increase their strength until they can eventually face off against the denzien boss of the area. However, the players are enemies just as much as allies: Only one can win each level, and be the one to (achieve the goal). This section is the pitch. Y'all already know the pitch, so I'll be rewriting it later when I have time to actually come up with something good. Also, this is a work in progress. If you're here before 11:59 pm on Sunday, don't even bother reading on. - Core Mechanics Movement Players will move relatively quickly across maps and screens, with the player character feeling rather quick when compared to Gauntlet or Binding of Isaac. The player should have a nearly unlimited rotational speed; they should have no trouble attacking in any direction at any time. The player should be constantly moving while fighting; there should never be a point where a player is able to dispatch a large group of enemies while standing still or moving in a simple straight line. This behavior will be encouraged by enemy types/specific weaknesses. - “Press to Swing” Combat Combat will be relatively simple, with basic attacking consisting of the majority of the primary action loop. The average enemy should only take one or two hits to kill, with only the most powerful opponents taking three or more hits. Each weapon type will vary slightly in it’s behavior, but none should deviate too far from a simple “point-and-swing” strategy. Weapons will usually deal their damage in an arc - or a line, in the case of potential projectile weapons. Attack Cooldown Swinging the weapon should require at least some commitment to the attack; Each swing should be a rapid animation with a cooldown to prevent spamming, and to add a feeling of weight to the strikes. It's important for this cooldown to be long enough that players' don't feel rewarded by spamming their attack, but short enough that their attacks don't feel sluggish. - Stat-UPs Player Characters have baseline stats at the start of a run, which can be improved over the course of the game through the use of pickups/enemy drops. These drops will most commonly increase movement speed, attack damage, and health, with rarer drops consisting of attack speed, weapon size, knockback, or potentially other more extreme changes. These will be the primary drop that players will be pursuing, as they will ALWAYS be something the player wants and needs. As such, we should opt for a large number of small bonuses, rather than a small number of large bonuses. A multitude of smaller bonuses will also help to ensure all players receive a relatively even distribution of total stats. Movement Speed The effects of movement speed bonuses will be among the most immediately obvious to the player, as well as the most useful across all aspects of gameplay: attacking, collecting, and evading, as well as pure traversal. Following this, we should make movement speed bonuses one of the most common. Health Although not as immediately apparent as the bonuses garnered from movement speed, Heath bonuses should be something that players should understand as intrinsically important. Health bonuses should be relatively common, although their magnitude, frequency, and whether they should affect current or only maximum health should all be carefully monitored to maintain difficulty. Attack Damage The third of the "basic" stat-ups is attack damage. These are simple, numerical bonuses to the total damage of each strike the player makes. Each weapon should have a value - based on its attack speed - that is multiplied by the number of attack-ups the player has collected to ensure that each weapon benefits equally from these bonuses. Player Size By modifying player size, we can change a lot of the fundamental interactions between players and enemies. Making a player smaller will increase their ability to evade attacks and projectiles, but will decrease the size of their attack arc. A larger player would be a large target, but would also be able to protect his allies in a larger area, were they to use a shield. Because neither scaling direction - growing or shrinking - will be the best choice for all players, we should include both. This will hopefully help to encourage the cooperative aspects of the game, as one player's trash can become another player's treasure. Slight changes to health, movement speed, and damage reduction should be considered as accompaniments to player size changes, to help control its effects in combat. As a side note, this would also open up the option for player-specific areas; eg. grates that small players can't pass over, or narrow hallways large players can't pass through. Weapon Size Simple enough. Increased weapon size will give the player an increased attack range. If weapons can be used to pick up dropped loot, then players Intentionally Ignored Stats These are stats that, while reasonable candidates for stat-up categories, have various reasons why they should not be implemented into early builds. * Attack Speed: Due to the high importance that attack cooldown holds, we should try to keep any changes to the cooldown between attacks to a minimum. We should increase the animation speed for the attack as we decrease cooldown between attacks, to make the effect more obvious to the player. These bonuses, if implemented, should be rare. * Damage Reduction: '''While defense is a reasonable and relatively common stat, its inclusion would make it more difficult to predict the total amount of damage players are taking on average. By keeping player defenses tied strictly to health, we can more easily scale enemy damage and healing effectiveness. - Secondary Mechanics '''Weapon-as-Class Rather than selecting a class or combat type prior to the start of a Game Run, players’ fighting style is determined by whatever items they currently have equipped. This allows players to determine on the fly which fighting style will be most effective for the current challenge; more importantly, it will help stop gameplay from becoming stale by adding variations to the player’s primary action loop throughout play. Weapon types should start with major differences (melee vs ranged) and then - through iteration - be expanded to include more nuanced differences (thrown vs fired, blunt vs bladed) which will allow for a greater range of variety between weapons. Weapons will also be responsible for giving the player their skills. Weapons should be a semi-rare drop, taking a back seat to gold, power-up, and experience drops. Because weapons have the potential to completely change a player’s fighting style, their dispersion should be limited. Players are also likely to actively ignore many weapons one they've found a weapon/weapon type they like, meaning that too many weapons will result in a high percentage of “dead drops” which the player doesn’t want. - = Cooperative Action Combat will be highly cooperative, with weapons and simple skills intended to encourage the players to work together while fighting. Competitive Collection Player Death When a player dies, a portion of their loot and stat-ups should jettison out, allowing other players to pillage their corpse. = Positional Skills Future/Potential Gameplay Mechanics Complicated Upgrades Character Creation Alternate Playable Characters Secondary Weapons With a second weapon on each character, our range of design choices for combat increases vastly. Stamina'' Art and Aesthetics Plot/Theme Ours is not a game which is trying to tell a story, its one where you get to smash baddies and shove your friends into a puddle to steal their candy. However, that doesn't mean that our world should feel lifeless, and we should always attempt to appeal to the player on as many layers as possible. This section should be filled out sooner, rather than later. Players Enemies Environments Interface Camera HUD Sound Predecessors Games from which we will be drawing inspiration include: * Gauntlet * Binding of Isaac * Rogue * Risk of Rain * Munchkin * Four Swords * Castle Crashers